Walking up the Camino and Down Again

orgiva 1

NOVEMBER in the Sierra Nevada. This camino runs from the rio Guadalfeo to Orgiva. It???s a back lane from a river to the centre of a small town. It is steep and long. Cars can be a problem. Goats can too . . .

orgiva 2orgiva 10 orgiva 9orgiva 3There are places where men have patched the camino with concrete, but other men and animals have left their marks before the concrete has set. Men tread in wet concrete by accident because they know what a pain concreting can be. Cats and dogs do it because they seek immortality.

orgiva 4 orgiva 5 orgiva 6 orgiva 7The pomegranates are at their ripest in November. The name pomegranate means Apple of Granada ??? which is the city on the other side of the mountains. Yesterday I bought two collarless shirts there for ten euros each. I would imagine the shirts with collars cost more ??? but I don???t know this for certain. That’s just me thinking logically.

orgiva 8Oranges are just beginning to ripen and drop off the trees. People drive over them ??? and pomegranates too. And olives and almonds and sweet chestnuts.

orgiva 12 orgiva 11 orgiva 13This morning the Sierra Nevada ??? the highest mountain range in Spain ??? is cloaked in dark clouds.

orgiva 14Glancing down the camino, Sierra de Lujar is bathed in sunshine.

orgiva 15Arriving in Orgiva we refresh ourselves with beer.

orgiva 19And a friendly chap in Molino???s provides us with tapas.

orgiva 20While a chap on a guitar outside another bar in Plaza Andalucia plays Concierto de Aranjuez very deftly indeed.

orgiva 18Then we wander back down the camino as the moon climbs above Lujar and the sun sets the sky on fire.

orgiva 21 orgiva 22 orgiva 23That???s the first day over. I think I???ll climb some mountains while I???m here.

About McEff

Alen McFadzean. Journalist. Recently made redundant from The Northern Echo when my job was transferred to Wales to be done by people on lower wages. Former shipyard electrician. Former quarryman and tunneller. Climb mountains and run long distances to make life harder. Gravitate to the left in politics just to make life harder still.
This entry was posted in Beer, Footpaths, Hiking, Mountains, Walking and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

15 Responses to Walking up the Camino and Down Again

  1. Richard says:

    Nice report and good photos. An area I don’t know too well.

  2. Hanna says:

    You’ve outdone yourself with your pictures, Alen. What a beautiful depiction of your trip on the Camino. I look forward to more stories from ‘The Porch’ :laugh:
    All the best!
    Hanna

  3. David says:

    A cold beer and tapas after a nice walk in the sunshine – sounds idyllic.

  4. How can you bear to come back to freezing, dull and gloomy England after being over there at the start of winter? I’d find that really hard!

    Never knew that about pomegranate but it makes complete sense…

    Blinding sunset photo at the end – I’ve only really seen one decent sunset over here this year.
    Carol.

    • McEff says:

      I can’t bear to be back in freezing, dull and gloomy England. That’s the simple answer to that one, Carol.
      We had a few blazing sunsets over there ??? one in a rainstorm when a heavily overcast sky was all pink underneath. I don’t know how that works.
      Cheers, Alen

      • Actually, I did see something similar a couple of nights ago. It was a very gloomy day with more or less total cloud cover, except just at the horizon. When it got dark, the whole of the underneath of the cloud layer went bright pink for about quarter of an hour. I was coming back from a walk and walking towards it so got to watch it – would have been too dark for me to get a photo though (not that I had my camera)…

        • McEff says:

          That sounds plausible. Perhaps, where I was in the mountains, the cloud layer ended down at the coast and the sun had just dipped beneath it. It was pretty impressive. Bright pink clouds and heavy rain.

  5. Jo Woolf says:

    Wow! It all looks lovely, very warm, sunny and agreeable! That looks to be a dangerous number of goats, though – did you turn and run?!

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